


Hold On

by MightyMousy



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Caryl, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:47:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4434335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MightyMousy/pseuds/MightyMousy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol needs a reason to hold on, to keep fighting to make it in this world. Daryl gives her one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold On

**Author's Note:**

> I ship Richonne and Bethyl but I enjoy Caryl. I was feeling poetic when I wrote this fic. I've only written Caryl once before (I normally stick to Richonne or reading Bethyl) but tonight I felt like writing them when I came up with this poem. It made me think of the bridge scene. Because of my Bethyl leanings I always feel like I don't quite get the Caryl dynamic outside of their friendship (it's a beautiful one). So to those who die-hard ship Caryl I hope this is an enjoyable read!

Baby, it'll be okay if you just hold on  
We've got today and our hearts are strong  
Let me see you through this like you'd do for me  
We'll beat this world  
We'll come out strong  
You and me  
If you just hold on

 

 

It was the quiet moments in the chaos that they lived for. All of them lived for a moment to rest, to take a moment to just breathe and glad that they were alive.

 

Carol Peletier was finding it increasingly difficult to think of a reason for to want to hang on. She was having a hard time thinking of a good reason to want to walk this world another moment. How could hell be any worse? She often asked herself that. How could hell torture her any worse than this life did?

 

Of course, as she sat in the stream and washed the grunge, sweat, and gore out of her clothes, she considered the other alternatives. There could be a heaven. Whether or not she, or any of her family outside of Carl and Judith, was worthy of it remained to be seen in her own mind. If heaven was real then there definitely wasn’t a reason to try to fight to remain in this world another day.

 

Of course there was oblivion. That was what Carol would have hoped for if she didn’t want to see her baby girl so damn badly. Sophia was never far from her thoughts. She didn’t speak of her daughter but she always had her on her mind. What she’d look like now. How good a fighter would she be? Would Daryl have taught her to track? Would she a be a hunter, a defender, one of the last rays of sunlight left for the family?

 

“You okay?”

 

Daryl came to sit beside her in the water, tackling the job of cleaning up like she would tackle the job of cleaning a squirrel. He frowned, he hurried, but he was thorough, and when he was done he sat down to scrub his clothes.

 

There wasn’t much left between them to say that they hadn’t already said over the years. They were a few members shorter. They were both hurting over losing Hershel, Beth, and Tyreese. They hurt over losing their home. The prison was supposed to be their safe place to ride out the storm. Carol had always envisioned that the community would grow, they’d expand the walls, they’d build the place up until one day, long after the original settlers were dead, there’d be a whole city surrounding that old prison. The walkers would be long gone, rotted away till they no longer posed a threat, and people could go back out into the world and discover how to operate it again.

 

That wasn’t to come to pass. The Governor had seen to that. He’d murdered one of the best people this terrible world had left to offer and destroyed their fences and with it their dreams. Her dreams. The memory of it made her squeeze her shirt with bitterness.

 

“Hey,” Daryl said, gripping her wrist. “What’s up?”

 

“You forget who you’re talkin’ to woman? Don’t try to bullshit me.”

 

She pulled at her wrist. He let her go. “Angry about anything in particular or about every damn thing?”

 

“Just thinking…everything. I’m pissed about it all. The Governor he…now we’re…”

 

Daryl nodded. Only he could understand her gibberish. She smiled despite herself but it was a fleeting smile.

 

“You told me to hold on. In that van, remember?”

 

“Yeah,” he said, getting out and going to sit on the riverbank. “You did, too. You’re still here, still kickin’, and so am I.”

 

“Beth ain’t. Tyreese ain’t.”

 

“They tried.”

 

“Why are we? Tryin’?” she asked.

 

Daryl gave that question serious thought. He looked at her, cigarette dangling from his lips. He puffed on it, sent a plume of smoke into the air. She watched the thing burn down to the butt and he flicked it into the river.

 

“Everybody fights. It’s in us,” he finally said. “We fight to win because it’s instinct.”

 

Carol didn’t try to hide the bitterness in her voice. “Win what, Daryl? What’s the grand fucking prize here? A whole lotta nothin’.”

 

“We’re the grand prize, dumbass,” he said.

 

She kicked him, none to gently, and he took it. He was used to being kicked. Either by people or life. Didn’t matter to him. Didn’t faze him.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“Ain’t nothin’,” he answered.

 

“What’s the prize for you?”

 

“Asskicker and kids like ‘er. Growin’ up and makin’ somethin’ outta nothin’.”

 

“I don’t have a prize.”

 

“Sure you do. Just gotta find it,” he said. “Just gotta hold on a little longer.”

 

“I don’t believe in some good place for us to find. Not anymore.”

 

He was staring at her now, looking at her nakedness under the moonlight. He looked back toward the distant light of the camp, could barely hear the voices of the family as they talked around the campfire where dinner was cooking. Then he looked back at her and put a hand to her chest, urged her to lie back in the grass.

 

“What’re you doing?”

 

“You ain’t no virgin. You know what I’m doin’,” he said.

 

She knew what he had planned. She just didn’t expect it. Not now. She didn’t expect him to turn her on her side, spoon her, slip his hand between her legs and please her. She didn’t expect him to finger her, or for her body to respond as hot and quickly as it did. God, it had been too long. Nobody had time for sex, or energy for it, not anymore. She just let herself forget everything, which was easy to do, and let herself become nothing more than a mass of tingling nerve endings as his fingers penetrated her, rubbed at her wet folds and ached in anticipation of his heavy, thick cock pulsing against her ass. She sighed, letting him lift her leg to drape it over his waist as he penetrated her.

 

“I ain’t gonna break,” she sighed, pushing against him while he rolled his hips behind her.

 

“Sometimes I think I will,” he panted, before rolling her face first into the grass and thrusting. Daryl entwined his fingers with Carol’s, pounded into her. She ached with each thrust, deliciously ached, her core filling with pressure and heat like a bomb that needed to go off. She stared further up river, then to the stars while Daryl filled her to the brim, stretched her, invaded her, his deep strokes pushing her ever closer to that much needed release until the grunts that he forced from her with each forward thrust of his hips erupted into a scream that was swallowed up in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t until she’d finished that he allowed himself that same release, deep inside her, hot and thick, and wonderful.

 

 

“We’re strong,” Daryl said, fixing his pants after they’d dressed. “We’re gonna beat this world.”

 

“You still haven’t said why we should.”

 

“Because, dumbass,” he said, lighting another crumpled cigarette. “I’m your prize. Me and some house with a stove and a bathtub and watchin’ Asskicker grow up. Ain’t that good enough?”

 

Carol hooked her thumbs in her pants and nudged him in that way he usually reserved for her when she flirted.

 

“Damn right you are.”

 

They headed back to camp to grab some dinner before it was all gone. Daryl was her prize. For him she’d hold on. She’d hold on as long as she could.


End file.
